My Father and Other Strangers
by jenny0198
Summary: Lee Fusco finds out things about his late father
1. Chapter 1

**My Father and Other Strangers**

Hey, pleased to meet you! Name's Lee Fusco, over from LA to sort out the old man's stuff. Hope it won't take long - the M&A team need my advice next week, I'm a lawyer working for a tech company in Silicon Valley. Actually you might be able to help; I think maybe I didn't know Dad as well as I thought.

I guess it started at Shaw's funeral. Wait! I should explain who Shaw is… was. Actually that's all part of it – I don't know who she was, what she was even. Yeah, well, ok, I'll slow down, say what's in my head and lay it all out. Ask questions if you need to.

I was maybe 15 or 16 when Shaw came into my life. My parents had split up a few years earlier and I shuttled between them, seeing Dad every couple of weeks. My father was Lionel Fusco, an NYPD cop. Maybe he and Shaw had known each other before but they never said. Anyway she appeared on the scene; I thought she was maybe Dad's girl, which I didn't like the sound of, but they seemed more like colleagues than anything – co-workers, you know? They used to joke that she could do stuff that cops couldn't, so she wasn't a cop, was she?

She saved my life once. I got kidnapped by some bad guys to put pressure on Dad, and Shaw came in and wasted those guys like it was the most natural thing in the world. She told me later that she had the choice to save me or Dad and Dad said to save me. That made me choke up, I tell you. Dad said she used to be a Marine and then did "other stuff" (whatever that means) hence her ability with weapons. She was usually pretty gruff and off-hand but after that I didn't mind her so much.

Anyway there was a period when I couldn't stay with Dad, my mother got quite annoyed with him but when he came to see me I noticed that he was really cautious when leaving the house – looking around and checking the area, that sort of thing. When I grew up I realised that some really heavy stuff must have been going on and Dad was involved and a target for someone.

Then everything went back to normal and Shaw seemed to be around a lot more. I went to college, got a job, and then married but I saw her at Dad's place off and on. Bear in mind I'm talking about 20 – 25 years here, maybe more; that's how long I've known her but I don't actually know a damn thing about her!

Dad retired but they still met up. I think they spent the odd night together but Dad said once she wasn't the marrying kind, I think he was a bit sad about that. Anyway she got sick – some sort of cancer – and Dad looked after her the last few months, moved her into his place and nursed her like they were married all along.

We were the only people at her funeral, kinda sad huh? She was buried in a small family plot in the cemetery but I noticed that the names were all different – Reese, Groves, Finch, Bear. Turns out that Bear was a damn dog! Didn't think you could bury pets with people but anyway. Reese and Groves died the same year, about when things got back to normal like I said before, then Bear and Finch a while later. Dad said they were Shaw's family and gave me a hard look when I mentioned the different names. To be honest I had other things to worry about and if Shaw wanted to be buried there, why not?

That was a few years ago and I think Dad missed her more than he let on, maybe that's why he wanted to be buried in that "family plot". He said he was the "last one" which I didn't, and still don't, understand. He passed away a few weeks ago and I came back for the funeral. There were lots of people there, which was good – a lot of retired cops especially but also unexpected people. The tech billionaire Logan Pierce showed up which threw me as he backs some of our competitors, he's semi-retired but still active in the tech world, but he said Dad had helped him out a few times. I never knew my father mixed in that kind of circle; wonder if he needs a lawyer. There was also an old American lady who came all the way from Italy called Mrs. Finch who I assumed was the widow of the guy in the other grave. She and Pierce too funnily enough, stood at the graveside for a while and talked in low tones. I was busy with all the other people so never got to speak to her. Someone said Pierce sent her back to Italy in his private jet.

Turned out from talking to those old cops afterwards that Lionel Fusco was a bit of a legend in the NYPD. A couple of them swore that they'd seen him solve cases without ever leaving his desk – he'd make some calls, wait, get some calls back, and then say that so-and-so is the perp for such-and-such a reason. Then he'd get an email with stuff in it – documents, photos, that kind of thing – to back it up and convince the captain to get a warrant.

Anyway I've been sorting through Dad's stuff the last few days and I'm finding things that I'm not sure about. It looks like he burnt a lot of documents just before he went into hospital but there's still quite a bit around. They are all very cryptic and I'm slowly ploughing through them. One weird thing that I never really noticed before is that "Lionel Fusco" is very difficult to find information about. These days, of course, everything is on the web and search engines can find anything. All old records have been digitised too so you should be able to go back years. You can't with Dad, not easily – it's like he never existed. Shaw's the same and so are the other names on those headstones. It's actually like they've been redacted from the internet – you know, the sort of thing they did years ago when paper documentation was used, they'd put big black lines through names and things they didn't want people to know about.

I've got the uneasy feeling that I should do what Dad was doing and burn it all. I know I'm a lawyer and everything but sometimes it's better not to know the truth.

Hello, what's this? Jesus Christ! It's a photo with names on the back. Ok, this is very lucky. Here's Dad with Reese, Finch, and Root – I wonder if that's Groves? Odds on that it is. Nice looking girl anyway. They're in a park having a picnic and Reese has got a bowling shirt on, wonder if I can make out the team name – might be able to track him from that. Hmm, no Shaw, maybe she took the photo. Anyway it proves Dad and the others were all part of the same thing, whatever that thing was. Or maybe still is. That's a point – if there are others still around maybe they won't like me sniffing about.

Yeah, I'm reaching make-your-mind-up time. Do I push on and find out what Dad and the rest were doing or let them rest in peace? The big worry, of course, is that it was something bad, illegal even. What do I do with that knowledge?

Oh no! Just found a key. Looks like one for a safety deposit box. Ok I've got to go on now, even if it's just to dispose of any evidence that's in the box. Look let's meet up tomorrow and I'll tell you how I got on.


	2. Chapter 2

**My Father and Other Strangers (2)**

Well, I made it back. Sorry I look a mess, I was up night going through what was in the box. You'll think I'm crazy but I keep thinking I'm being watched - I took 3 cabs to get here, just in case. How's that for paranoia?

Sure, I got the box easy enough – showed the death certificate and the bank was fine about it. It had a lot of Dad's diaries and notebooks in it, going back years, before I was born even. There was a letter in it for me too: told me to destroy everything and on no account read any of it. Said it could put me in danger. It's like I'm in a movie – one of the old fashioned ones with real human actors. Diaries and notebooks are old time too but Dad was an old school guy. Me, I'd keep all this on a hologram drive. Anyway I didn't take any notice of the letter.

Maybe I shoulda done, reading the stuff was a helluva shock. My old man had a whole secret life, well secret lives actually: I'll be straight with you; for a long time Lionel Fusco, my father, was a bad cop. When I say bad cop I mean he did bad things - stole, killed, took bribes, the whole shebang. He was a member of a secret organisation inside the NYPD called HR that I vaguely remember – lots of guys resigned, were fired, or did jail time when it got broken up. Dad had a change of heart and helped to bring it down, even arrested the No. 2 guy. This guy had killed Carter, Dad's partner at the time, and Dad always spoke highly of her – said she was a damn good cop and a better person – so I guess it got personal with him. How the hell he never got dragged into the court cases afterwards I don't know. I think maybe he was protected, you'll see what I mean later.

Anyway, and here it's a bit confusing, towards the end, at the same time, he was working with Reese and Finch in _their_ secret organisation as well. Carter was involved too, they were the inside guys feeding info to the other 2. Shaw and Groves got involved later on although Dad was always a bit wary of Groves – he wrote that she was crazy and violence prone. Funny, she looks real cute in that photo, not that I'll tell my wife that.

Now for the interesting bit – what did Finch's organisation (he seemed to be the leader) actually do? According to Dad it was pretty simple; they stopped crimes. I can see you're puzzled – how is that different from the NYPD and Dad's regular job? Ah, well, if you think about it, the police don't _stop_ crimes – they find out afterwards who did the crime in the first place. Finch and the others had a way of knowing that a crime would happen in the _future_.

They never knew the details; just that a particular person would be involved and they had to figure out if that person was the perpetrator or the victim. This is where my Dad and Carter came in; they could pass information to the others but also be on hand to arrest the bad guys when Reese and Finch figured out who was who. As you can imagine real criminal types were often involved so Reese and, later, Shaw as well, provided the muscle if there was any trouble. These criminals weren't just street corner punks – they could be real heavyweights like Mafia types or terrorists, very dangerous people to go up against.

Oddly enough, though, they seem to have had a working relationship with one of the major underworld figures of the day, guy called Elias. Quite a few times he did them favours and they helped him out in return – saved his life a couple of times at least. It sounds strange but remember: they weren't interested in _all_ criminal activities, just the ones they'd been told about. Incidentally it seems Elias got killed in the same series of events as Reese and Groves.

Looks like Dad got a great deal of job satisfaction from this – "protect and serve" and all that - though he says that sometimes it was difficult to sympathise with the victim but that was no different to his police work. Dad also writes that, like the police, they didn't always manage to save the day, especially if they had a long list of names to get through. Again that was like his regular job so he was philosophical about it too.

After Reese and Groves got killed, Finch must've retired as Dad doesn't mention him much after that, apart from 10 or so years later when he died and Dad and Shaw went to the funeral at that family plot in the cemetery.

Anyhow, Dad and Shaw carried on the work for the next 20-odd years until they both got too old for the physical stuff. They didn't recruit anyone else to replace the others, I don't think. To be frank, I'm not sure how successful they were compared to before; 2 people are too few for a city the size of New York.

Once Dad retired I guess it would've been more difficult to get the information needed on people anyway. Even so they still tackled the odd case, I guess ones that two senior citizens like them could handle.

What's interesting is that Dad mentions other teams like theirs that are based in other cities and he talks about the current NYC one too so I guess there's a second generation, maybe a third by now. Reese and Groves show that it's a dangerous line of work to be in and I'm guessing that this second team worked in parallel with Dad and Shaw.

It's frustrating, but understandable, that Dad only uses initials and not names in the documents. I imagine they must still have people in the NYPD helping them but they've spread to the federal level too – Dad mentions "friends" in the FBI - and it looks like they have contacts in the CIA too as Dad writes about "G", who seems to be high-up in their Russian department.

I know what you want to ask – how did they know about the future? Was it ESP, magic, the Force, or something else? Ok it wasn't the first three, I don't think anyway.

Dad refers to "M" as the source of the information and I assume that this "M" recruited and set up all the other teams too. All these initials are a bit James Bond-ish (that's an old time series of films that show up late night on TV sometimes, characters in them have initials instead of names).

What Dad doesn't say is whether the organisation is international – do other countries have a similar set-up? If it is, it must be a huge network of people, how on earth does it remain hidden? Even if it's just the USA there must be a large group of people involved.

Hmm, remember I said that it was hard to find information on Dad, Shaw, and the others? I reckon everyone involved gets treated like that. These days not showing up in a search results page means you're practically invisible, for good or bad, which must be a large part of it. Which begs the question of how they fix the web to do that? I mean Dad is on the web but you can't find him unless you know where.

Excuse me, there's a phone call; probably the office wanting to know when I'm back. Won't be a minute.

"CAN. YOU. HEAR. ME?"

oooooooooo

 _Late news: Police continue to investigate the death of Lee Fusco, a resident of Los Angeles. Friends report that Mr. Fusco had recently returned from New York and complained that he was "being watched all the time". Suicide has not been ruled out._


End file.
